Radical community work

Abstract

When a multilevel analysis of the social services is made the following contradiction emerges sharply:- the positive social concerns and the efforts to meet needs are undermined by the forces which the social services sustain and reinforce in the society at large. At the same time that they are concerned about the promotion of human welfare, the social services buttress values, institutions and procedures that are destructive to that value. The services are products of, and responsive to, a social order that values economic growth and political stability above human well being and that uses social services and the helping professions to preserve and strengthen ideologies, behaviours and structures of the status quo. This paradox suggests that politically conscious workers and socially concerned persons must operate in a way that transcends current assumptions and procedures; they must attempt to create something wholly new. In sum, this thesis involves seeing our society as an oppressive alienating structure that makes the oppressed, in Freire's terminology "Beings for others" rather than "Beings for themselves". I was interested in discovering the nature of oppression in New Zealand society and the ways in which a worker could have relevance to the needs and goals of the oppressed within our society. I was concerned with studying the following questions:- 1. How is the community formed? 2. What are the needs of people in rapidly growing communities? 3. Is there a preventative role in community formation rather than the present emphasis on remedial work? 4. What can be done, particularly in new developing areas, to develop social plans that are coterminus with and even perhaps precede the development of local body schemes or the physical planning? 5. How politically conscious are people of the dehumanising reality? How aware are they as people of their real wants and needs and how to demand their satisfaction? On a personal level as a worker I wanted to see if I could perceive parts of this dehumanising reality in the lives of people and their community and explore ways that a radical worker could act to expand social consciousness and further to help people take action. The study was undertaken in a newly developing suburb in Porirua East, Ascot Park. It initially involved, using participant observation methods, seeing how residents perceived their world. At a later stage I felt a real need to involve them in beginning to look, study, reflect and act on their own processes, to move from being objects of my study, to a position where we were subjects together unveiling our world and taking action on our common needs, an action research model. An undercurrent involved here was my personal movement from someone who was an impartial social scientist to a position where I fully accepted my political involvement in the struggle of people for liberation and independence. The data is collected into two chapters; the first includes residents' perceptions of the services which affected them in their day to day lives as well as groups they were participating in as they attempted to gain goals they had set. To their dissatisfactions of satisfactions I have in places attempted to relate their thoughts to be value system and theory outlined in the first section, and to expand the radical analysis where possible. The second chapter is an account of how residents saw everyday life and how they related to other neighbours. I hope in a small way that this study does contribute to our understanding of oppression in New Zealand and gives some tentative directions towards ways in which a radical worker might participate to help people gain a fundamentally different society that is committed to human liberation not human denial, A society that allows man to move towards ever new possibilities of a fuller and richer life individually and collectively.